We had taken in a cargo of pit props at Drammen, and came down the fjord with a light northerly breeze. A little way out the wind dropped altogether and the Jenny lay drifting idly under a blazing sun.
Dirrik sounded the well, and declared that "the old swine was leaking like a sieve."—"Nonsense!" said the skipper. "Why, it's not more than three years since her last overhaul."—"Maybe," said Dirrik, "but she's powerful old."—"Old she may be—built in '32—and I won't say but she's a trifle groggy about the ribs; still, she's good for this bit of a run. And summer weather and all."
Dirrik tried again. "Twenty-two inches," he said, and looked inquiringly at the skipper. "Well, then, you two men get the boat and go ashore for a few sacks of caulking. There's plenty of ant-heaps up in the wood there."
I was ready to burst with pride at finding myself thus bracketed with Dirrik as a "man." I felt myself a sailor already, and would not have bartered the title for that of a Consul-General or Secretary of State.
But the ant-heaps puzzled me. I could see no connection between ant-heaps in a wood on shore and the caulking of a leaky schooner. However, the first duty of man at sea is to obey the orders of the supreme power on board, i.e. the skipper; I curbed my curiosity, then, for the time, and waited till we were a few lengths away from the ship.
"Ant-heaps?" said Dirrik. "Why, 'tis the only way to do with a leaky old tub like that. We dig 'em up, d'ye see, pine needles and all, and drag a caseful round her sides and down towards her keel, and she sucks it all up in her seams, ants and needles and bits of twigs, and the whole boiling, and that's the finest caulking you can get!"
"Queer sort of caulking," I said.
"There's queerer things than that, lad, when a vessel gets that old. It's the same like with human beings. Some of them keeps sound and fit, and others go rotten and mouldy and drink like hogs—but they often live the longest for all that!"
"Do you think we'll ever get her across to England, Dirrik?"
"Get her across? Why, what are you thinking of? She's never had so much as a copper nail put in these last thirty years, but she'll sail for all that. Run all heeled over on one side, she will, and squirming and screeching like a sea-serpent."